


Pills

by Astlin



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Dark, Drug Use, F/M, No Incest, Very graphic depictions of overdose, Why Did I Write This?, i'm sorry okay?, look - Freeform, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 15:07:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30141396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astlin/pseuds/Astlin
Summary: Dante expected to come back to his office and fuckingrelax. Not find his nephew collapsed on his desk, minutes away from deaths door.
Relationships: Kyrie & Nero (Devil May Cry), Kyrie/Nero (Devil May Cry)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Pills

**Author's Note:**

> I've been having a bit of a hard time lately. Not with drug use, but my own inner demon's. So I wrote this based on a prompt I saw on Tik Tok. I don't expect anyone to read it, but if you do I hope this doesn't hurt too much.
> 
> If you're not looking for something dark, I have something a bit lighter on my profile.

The world was quiet. Only the sound of the nightlife in the city could be heard before two large ornate doors slammed open, barely missing the wall before they came to a stop with a creak. A large, pale figure, clad in red, wandered into the Devil May Cry office early into the morning, but the sun had yet to rise. Dante was about to turn and shove both doors to their original places in the frame before he halted. Nero, the quarter-demon, was lying on his desk. Everything that used to be on it was dumped onto the floor. He was unharmed. Nothing smelled like blood. Thinking the young man simply got shit faced again and passed out on his desk, the older devil slammed his doors shut in the expectation that the noise would startled the young man awake. It didn't. Nero's body stayed where it was, legs dangling off one side, one arm thrown over his stomach and the other above his head. 

Silver brows creased in confusion then. Normally, Nero was a light sleeper. Normally, he woke up at the smallest of sounds, so a loud bang usually does more. It irritated the young demon hunter. But now, as he looked at the man's body on the desk while he stepped closer, he wondered what was going on. Nero's face was pale, damp, and he had blue tinted lips. The rest of the shorter demon was pale. White as a sheet. 

Dante kicked him in the leg. It was only then that the younger male jolted with a start, body jerking violently as he realized there was something in the room with him, but not having enough energy to really move. Dante kicked him in the foot again and this time, a small smile appeared on Nero’s face. It was cocky, feisty, but far away. 

"Oh shit." The words were a drawl. They sounded wrong. Dante couldn't put his finger on how, but it was. Perhaps it was the tone? Maybe his current physical state? No. It was perhaps that he sounded like he wasn't really talking to Dante. It sounded like he was simply responding to the older man's presence. Then the younger man was lying his head down on Dante's desk again with a laugh that didn't sound quite all there either. "Scared… shit outta me." The words were far away, listless. Dante noted that the young man didn't smell like alcohol either. Why was he acting like this?

"If you're gonna take a nap, at least take it on the couch." The words were said in his usual teasing tone, but they were a bit serious. Nero didn't answer, only went back to being motionless. That when Dante noticed it. Nero's breathing was significantly slower than it normally was. Heart rate was slower yet. Anger coiled in his gut but he pressed it down. The next words fell from his lips in frustration. "Kid, what did you do?" The question was growled out in a very rough, low tone as he smacked Nero's thigh with his hand this time. The pain brought Nero back a bit, who didn't really seem to notice other than jumping a bit as he responded in a small, carefree tone. 

"...took a shit load of pills." The words were a drawl on his tongue. Dante's thoughts stopped for a moment, a mere heartbeat before only a single word of the younger man's was repeated. 

"Pills…?" The word didn't sound like a question. Dante’s mind switched into high gear as he watched Nero's head lull to the side then, not responding. He pressed further. "What kind of pills?" He was glad, at least, that his voice was composed, even though he felt like his heart was about to explode from his chest. Nero responded softly then, his tone a bit higher than one from before as he tried his best to straighten his head.

"Oh, you know…" The twenty-year-old laughed a bit then in a breathy fashion, a smile floating onto his face before his head slowly started to slide to the side again while he spoke. "...pills." Then, to Dante's absolute horror, as he walked around the side of his desk to get a bit closer to Nero, that head that had been falling, stopped moving. Then, his breathing stopped. The silence that filled the room was bone chilling. Fight or flight kicked in as Dante stooped down, placing a hand on a damp, cold shoulder before his voice came from him, a bit panicked. 

"Nero." The urgency in his voice could be barely heard. He gently shook Nero as the word left his mouth, repeating the young demon's name when he didn't receive a response. Then, as he reached over and felt for a pulse, he held his breath and swallowed hard. There was no throbbing under his finger tips. Only damp skin. He tried not to let the panic fill him as he quickly looked around the room and then back at Nero. "Fuck…" The word was like a spell being broken. Dante immediately grabbed the young male and hauled him down to the floor so his body was flat. He hardly knew what to do. He'd never been able to do things like this. Chemicals didn't react with his half-demon blood like they did with human blood. Nero, though, was three quarters human, so when he finally managed to get the younger man on the floor, he did the only thing he knew how to do. He lifted Nero's chin so his airways were clear, opened the young man's mouth and then leaned down to breathe air into his mouth as he pinched the nose above it. He'd only seen this type of reaction once when he was drinking at a shitty bar in his old days. Cocaine was one helluva drug. Things had escalated quickly shortly after. The guy, unfortunately, hadn't made it. He'd only been there for the portion after he'd collapsed on the bar, unmoving, unresponsive. Walking into that had left a dirty taste in his mouth for a while. He chose to stick with drinking shortly after. Now, as he breathed into his nephew's mouth, a bit of desperation filled him at the thought of him; bubbling at the mouth, eyes rolled back, then still once more.

After making Nero's chest rise and fall twice, steadily, the young adult was released and then hands were placed on his chest, one on top of the other in the center of his chest. Compressions began then, quick, matching the heavy heartbeat in Dante's own chest. Nero's head flopped to the side with the effort. A growl came from Dante as he repeated the compressions for a short while. He repeated the process after a moment, breathing air into the unmoving lungs below him. On the second breath, the young devil hunter convulsed, startling Dante as his body coughed out violently before the other could pull away. The older demon ignored the fact that he'd just been coughed into and wiped some of the spit off his face with the arm of his coat as Nero took some deep breaths erratically, his body going limp again. As Nero returned to himself, Dante turned the kid on his side and forced his mouth open so he could shove fingers down his throat. He hadn't seen the bartender do this and assumed it may have been because the woman's fingers would have gotten bitten off, but he didn't exactly wanna cart the man to the hospital to have his stomach pumped, nor could he go and get ipecac anymore as the stores stopped selling it, so he took his chances. Hopefully his demonic heritage meant he was sturdy enough to avoid that if Nero happened to collapse into convulsions. The gasp and gag that he received in return for his actions made adrenaline run cold on his nerves, but he ignored it as he tried to force Nero to vomit what he'd taken by pressing his fingers up against the man's uvula in a firm but tickling motion. Nero's body heaved and Dante had to hold the young adult's chin firmly as hands came up and grabbed his wrists, shaky, weak, but still demonic in their force. Nero heaved again,, eyes squeezing shut as another followed right behind it and then he was vomiting. The way bile welled up around his fingers before he let Nero rip them from his mouth, only to have them and dozens of pills mixed into bile spill out onto the floor next to a white head of hair made Dante's nausea bubble up fiercely, but he ignored it with a clenched jaw in favor of repeating the steps, ignoring the warm, yet cooling liquid on his hand.

Nero gagged wetly several times, coughed and tried to push his hand away a bit weaker this time, sputtered and drooled when he realized the hand wasn't going anywhere, and at one point began to tear up, blinking them back angrily as Dante forced everything out of him. Some of the medication he'd taken had already begun dissolving as they came up from his stomach, but most were sticking together, covered in yellow stomach acid as they came up. Dante noticed that the man had nothing else in his stomach other than the pills despite it being the middle of the night after dinner time and annoyance bubbled inside him that was quickly shoved back down. He knew well that they didn't need as much food as others, but the thought that he'd taken over what looked to be thirty pills on an empty stomach unnerved him. Still, he shook the thoughts away.

 _'Save the kid.'_ The thought was all that filled his head next as he proceeded to fight with Nero, who was getting weaker as they kept on.

The process took a little while. Nero, at one point, couldn't take it anymore and simply grabbed the older man’s coat as he choked up a few more pills and tried to breathe. Dante barely noticed the hand on his coat, only brushing a hand against it in a comforting way as they continued. By the time Nero was done, the poor young adult's throat was nearly numb with pain. He was weak, but he was alive and his demonic blood would be able to clean out the rest of the medication faster than a normal human as well as heal the damage from his throat. It wouldn't take him long to heal now that his body wasn't being actively attacked by whatever he'd managed to vomit back up. Dante had only managed to get a glance at them before he'd hauled himself from the floor to take long strides to the kitchen so he could get the kid some water. He wasn't sure what kind of medication the younger man had taken, but one thing was for sure. He passed right the fuck back out once Dante was done saving his fucking life. Dante had to wake him back up after coming back in, hoping to keep him conscious. The water was forced down, much to Nero's distaste, and then he was picked up and put on the tired leather couch by his stairs. He was fading in and out again now, smiling faintly. It was only when the younger white haired male was finally prompted back back to a semi-alert state and given another glass of water to hold and they talked that Dante finally turned around and looked at the vomit on his floor. 

'Damn it…' The words were a brief thought in his head before he spoke to Nero, who was having a hard time keeping his head up, but he was - at least to Dante's knowledge - conscious. "If you plan on havin' fun again, you may wanna try slowin' down next time, kid?" There was a long pause then Dante spoke again. "Give Nico a call when you sober up." The words were meant to ease the tension of the situation. They both knew this wasn't the first time that Nero had dabbled in drugs.

Ever since he had lost Kyrie in a demon attack one night, he hadn't been able to keep a straight head about him. He'd been shipped off to Dante's by the new General after he realized the younger man had a dependency issue. Nero, being part demon with absolutely no respect earned in Fortuna, was basically tossed out onto the curb without his things when his last ties to the city were broken. Not even his weapons went with him. And when he'd tried to get them back, the new general of the Order had explained that he'd already had them disassembled and reconstructed into other weapons for those that would actually serve a greater purpose. The urge to bust the generals face in had been immense, but instead, he'd carted himself off to Red Grave with Nico in the shitty van that they'd managed to procure before their trip. If he'd popped a few pills on the way there, well, Nico one seemed to notice… or care. Probably because he'd stopped pestering her about her smoking. Though he still stuck his head out the window. Being on cloud nine and sitting in second hand smoke was annoying. Now though, seeing the younger man lying on the couch, Dante wondered just how much losing his wife and unborn child had truly broken him.

Dante understood his behaviors. The older man had gone through every single thing he could think of to try and end his own life after he'd lost his brother a second time. Normal ways didn't really work on him though. Sure, he'd been stabbed and shot in the head, but he'd also tried about every single lethal drug under the sun. He'd also tried throwing himself into a furnace… the memory of walking out of the dying flames, hours later with charred skin made him sniff and shake the thoughts away. He'd ended up unintentionally torturing himself on some of his attempts. Instead, he chose to fill his time with things he deemed fun and avoided most of those thoughts. It wasn't exactly _healthy_ , but it was better than…. 

Dante's eyes glanced back at the younger man when he noticed he hadn't gotten an answer. He expected to find Nero passed out again. Instead of finding an unconscious young adult behind him, he found Nero smiling up at the ceiling, eyes fogged over as he was drifting amongst the panels above him. Dante was going to make another comment, but chose to hold his tongue as he took a few steps away. The other man would likely need more help than Dante had ever gotten… or needed to be perfectly honest. He wondered if Lady would be able to come over and help. He was pretty sure he'd heard her talk about girls in her school going through this same thing. Until then, he would look over the younger devil hunter here if he kept sneaking off to come here anyway. Neither Dante nor Nico certainly wouldn't want him dying on the street trying to make it here. Even if he was fucking pissed that he had to clean up vomit and pills from his wood floor. Trauma did horrible things to the human mind. He wouldn't hold this against the younger man, at all. Instead, he wandered off to grab whatever cleaning implements Patty had left lying around from when she would frequent the office.

When he came back, he inspected the capsules that Nero had thrown up. The capsules encasing the drug were all sorts of sparkling colors, but the off-white powder inside was all the same. Fine and powdery like flour, but didn't cake together, like sand. He inspected them closer as the mass fell apart while trying to pick it up. A few in the center of the mass were completely dry and as he cracked it up and tasted a bit on his pink, ignoring the fact that it has just come out of someone's stomach, he realized that his nephew has tried to overdose on Molly mixed with methamphetamine, a fairly common mixture amongst party communities as it kept you awake and in a good mood as long as it was in your system. Though this was true, it was a dangerous mixture. You never slept, you never ate, you were always thirsty and yet you could easily take and keep water on your body easily leading to death. You could also not eat or drink anything fairly easily as the amphetamines made it easy to ignore your body's natural urges like hunger and thirst. So, as he turned and threw the rest of the powdered mixture into the trash bag he'd managed to scrounge around, which was really just a grocery bag without holes in it, he promptly cleaned the mess up and thought about his conversation on the phone he would be having with Lady later. It would be more difficult than he'd originally thought.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I can say I gave myself about three anxiety attacks while writing this. Not that I needed to, but the images were stuck in my head and I felt the need to write them out. I hope, that if you are reading this and you do have a dependency, you make it out alive. That's all I want. I could care less about the money you waste, the people you cut out so you can get better, or the things you have to do to make sure your friend is alive at the end of the night. I'm proud that you're alive. Even if you're struggling. You can make it. Every step will suck. Every thought will be painful, but there will come a time where all of it fades away and you are once again free to be the person you wished you were before it all began.


End file.
